he would remain my senator until i left hawaii for college. even though my mother and grandparents took great pride that they had voted for him, i confess that i wasn't paying much attention to the united states senate at the age of four or five or six. it wasn't until i was 11 years old that i recall even learning what a u.s. senator was or registering at least. it was during my summer vacation with my family, my first trip to what those of us in hawaii call the mainland, so we flew over the ocean, and with my mother and my grandmother and my sister who at the time was two, we traveled around the country. big trip. we went to seattle and we went to disney land which was most important, and we traveled to kansas where my grandmother's family was from, and went to chicago and went to yellowstone. we took greyhound buses most of the time and we rented cars and would stay in local motels or howard johnson's and if there was a pool at one of these motels, even if it was just tiny, i would be very excited and the ice machine was exciting and the ve